The response of the mainstream Canadian media to the recent discovery of a number of burial grounds adjacent to various Western Residential Schools has been marked by a level of hysteria inconsistent with anything approaching an honest presentation of the Facts. Of course that’s the case with most everything coming from the political Left these days. Given that its informing narrative is that Western Civilization, as represented in this case by Canadian Christians, is the most pernicious force in all of history, any facts inconsistent with that myth tend to be simply, conveniently, overlooked.
Time and space do not allow us to explore every aspect of this issue. But the conclusion pushed by almost every news report I have read or watched is that these grave sites are almost exclusively crammed with innocent Indigenous kids prematurely dispatched by the cruelty and abuses of their White educators. The implications of the actual evidence, however, are far more ambiguous than this typically simplistic explanation.
On June 24, for example, it was announced that 751 graves had been discovered in Saskatchewan near the Marieval Residential School. But Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme said that the site was no secret, was a burial ground that had formerly been marked by wooden crosses which had subsequently turned to dust, indeed was a cemetery frequently used by the non-Indigenous members of the surrounding rural community! Any estimate of the number of Indigenous children buried there is thus purely a matter of speculation.
The testimony of Sophie Pierre, former Chief of the St. Mary’s Indian Band and a survivor of the Residential School near Cranbrook, B.C., casts similar doubts on the conclusions being drawn by the hysterical Left. The 182 graves found near her school, she says, had also been marked with wooden crosses and were part of a known cemetery that had been founded in 1865, the local hospital having begun to deposit unclaimed bodies there in 1874. While certainly critical of the sometimes cruel treatment she received at the hands of her “Christian” educators, she suggests the vast majority of the 182 to have probably died of tuberculosis and other such previously common afflictions.
This entire controversy, of course, re-emerged in May as a Canadian obsession as a result of the report of 215 unmarked graves near the Tk’emlups School in Kamloops, B.C. But that school had been open from 1893 to 1978, meaning that less than three people per year had been interred there throughout that period. As both Delorme and Pierre suggested in their statements, the conclusion that those 215 graves represented 215 Indigenous kids who died at the abusive hands of their keepers is utterly without basis.
This is in no way meant to imply Canada’s Residential Schools were free of abuse and indeed that that abuse was not the result of racism. But for those on the Left, the very assumption of Western European Christians a hundred and thirty years ago that their Civilization was inestimably more advanced than that of the Indigenous is itself inherently racist. There is a not very subtle difference, however, between that utterly rational discrimination and the unconscionable conclusion that it entitles one to mistreat those deemed to be culturally inferior. It is a distinction, apparently, too subtle for the contemporary “progressive” narrative which sees the very idea of the Residential Schools as an expression of Western European arrogance.
No one better represents Man’s capacity for an intelligent, moral perspective transcending the specious allure of Race than Ellis Ross, a Councilor of the West Coast Haisla First Nation who is perfectly willing to admit the warlike and indeed imperialistic tendencies of his ancestors, thereby debunking the now widely accepted Myth that the Americas were wrested from their original, innocent inhabitants by the vile predators of Western Europe. Suggesting that White Canadians need be no more apologetic for the deeds of their ancestors than his own people, he recently financed a billboard on a B.C. highway declaring: “We are all in this together.” Refusing to live in the past, seeing those attempting to exploit the past as charlatans, he actually celebrates the Canadian oil industry and the jobs it offers his people as their hope for a more prosperous future.
The war infested history of the Americas’ Indigenous is well documented in Lawrence H. Keeley’s “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage,” a book which suggests the Indians of the Western World to have been more relentlessly and thoroughly vicious than their Colonial invaders. While it is of course Politically Incorrect to say so, the latter came to dominate the Americas not because they were more evil than those they encountered, but because their Civilization was significantly more advanced.
Here in Canada no one I know of is attempting to deny the ugly realities of its Residential Schools. But the mainstream media, in typically incendiary fashion, has been using this past six weeks to cultivate grossly distorted if not outright deceitful interpretations of the facts. As the Indigenous individuals cited above admitted, neither the Catholic Church nor Canadian government conspired to keep these grave sites a secret. They were well-known facts to their surrounding communities. And the Church, far from denying its responsibility for the Residential Schools, has not only apologized repeatedly but, as my research of Cadmus Delorme revealed, gave Saskatchewan’s Cowessess Tribe $70,000 a couple of years ago that it might investigate the identity of the occupants of its massive cemetery and perhaps redeem it from its state of disrepair. While such gestures can hardly make up for the Sins of the Past, are they the acts of a people that is inherently, systemically racist, or is that notion of no more merit than the one currently trending south of the border, the idiotic idea that White Americans who have never entertained a racist thought in their lives, are nevertheless racist to their very core?
As of 2020, Canada’s last three federal budgets had allocated 16.8 billion dollars to the welfare of our Indigenous. A 2011 survey revealed that while Reservation Schools were being given $13,524 per student, kids in our public school system were being financed by $2,000 less. While various tribal chiefs have complained that they are underfunded, the evidence would suggest that in many cases they are the problem. It’s very complicated. In 1950 Canada spent $922 per capita on its Indigenous population while by 2012 that figure had risen to $9,056! In 2013-14 Health Canada spent 1.1 billion dollars on supplementary benefits such as dental care and pharmaceuticals for Indians, benefits not available to its White citizens. Are these numbers consistent with a people intent on genocide? Or has the Left, invoking as always the gross simplifications of its Marxist paradigm, lost sight of the complexities of what it means to be a Human Being?
A White cop kills a drug addicted Black criminal in a complicated and stressful confrontation and the Left concludes all White cop are racists. A Hollywood producer uses his power and influence to seduce a bevy of ambitious starlets and the Left concludes all Men are sexual predators. A psychopath, as has just happened in London, Ont., runs down 4 innocent Muslims with a pickup truck and the Left concludes any criticism of Sharia Law to be “hate speech.” Such is the sophisticated “logic” of the Left.
I was born and raised in Hamilton, Ont. The very heart of our city, Gore Park, features a statue of Sir John A. MacDonald. The Indigenous community, with the support of “progressives,” has been lobbying for some time now to have the statue removed. City Council just recently voted to deny that request. On July 10 our local newspaper, which is now but a puppet of the Leftist Toronto Star, published an editorial denouncing the insensitivity of the decision, claiming it was but another example of our indifference to the feelings of those we have persecuted. But, I must ask my “progressive” friends, are Feelings in any way a reliable conduit to the Truth, in any way conducive to an accurate appraisal of the complexities of History?
Sir John A. was preeminently concerned with securing our national unity. One of his main obstacles was the resistance of Canada’s Indigenous. I just recently read an article implying he had callously allowed thousands of them to starve to death between 1879 and 1883. Conrad Black countered in the National Post that while our government had made an admittedly half-hearted attempt to help them, only 45 or so had actually perished in those years of famine, hardly numbers consistent with a determined attempt at genocide. I am in no way exonerating all aspects of MacDonald’s treatment of the Indigenous, but the fact is that had they gained the upper hand over their White adversaries, they very well might have, as Keeley’s book suggests, slaughtered them outright.
There are few saints in history and MacDonald was not one of them. Yet his approval of the Residential Schools seems to have been rooted in a genuine concern for both Canada’s future and that of its Indigenous population which, he felt, would suffer inestimably without a Western education. Attendance at those schools only became mandatory in 1894 while he died in 1891. That he is being held responsible for abuses most of which occurred after his death is absurd. Of course the “logic” behind that indictment, manifest in the belief of various contemporary academics that, for example, math and science are racist, punctuality and good manners are racist, indeed French cuisine is racist, is that MacDonald’s determination to educate the Indigenous was racist!
Critical Race Theory paints our first P.M. as a White Supremacist. A rational appraisal of the historical facts sees him as a basically good man forced by circumstance to some questionable decisions in the pursuit of what he thought was right. Vilifying him for characterizing the Indigenous as “savages” entails a level of intellectual dishonesty that is despicable, the application of Post Modern Relativism to one who lived 150 years ago. References to him, and I have seen several, as but an earlier version of Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin, are simplistic beyond belief.
I often use the term “mindless” in referring to those on the Left because they see Culture as nothing more than a tool of Oppression. But for MacDonald, Western Culture was key to the civilization of the Americas. He was, as were the fathers of the U.S. Constitution, a Humanist, an Enlightenment Man who envisioned Canada as a Democracy ensuring the Natural Rights and Freedoms of every citizen, a Rational Construct from which its diverse communities, including the Indigenous, might ultimately benefit, a construct in which the Free exchange of Ideas was essential to the Dialectic of Human Progress.
Given his faith in the worthiness of that dream, one might wonder how he ought to have dealt with the tens of thousands of Indigenous determined to thwart it. The politically correct answer, of course, is that we took this land from them and had no right to be here in the first place. But with typically “progressive” dishonesty, this narrative ignores the realities of History, the fact that many of America’s Indigenous tribes, prior to the arrival of Columbus, warred almost constantly with their neighbors, confiscating their land, raping their women, beheading their men, etc., etc. Was MacDonald right in seeking to impose his Western European Culture upon the peoples of Canada, or would North America today be far better off had our ancestors never left Europe? Sadly, if you are a “progressive,” I fear a rational response is beyond you.
None of this is intended to exonerate the sins of Western European Colonialists or indeed of Sir John A. MacDonald. But we honor those such as he, and, south of the border, people like Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, imperfect though they may have been, for their devotion to the Principles and Values that made our countries what they are. The argument that Canada’s Residential Schools were proof of systemic racism simplistically uses the predictably vile behavior of a Few to indict the mindset of the Whole. That we only began to aggressively attack the problems of Indigenous poverty and alienation a few decades ago is less the result of Canadian indifference than of the two Great Wars and Depression which dominated the first half of the last Century. Indeed the evolution of Canada’s social policies since the Sixties is proof of the efficacy of that Cultural Dialectic which Enlightenment Humanists saw as the inevitable product of Man’s capacity as an Intelligent Being. That the billions of dollars we have subsequently devoted to Indigenous issues have failed to produce the desired results is at least in part due to the refusal of a certain percentage of them to abandon their Traditional Culture, to admit its futility in dealing with the realities of the 21st Century. It is, quite frankly, a result of their racism, not ours.
Google Pierre Trudeau’s 1969 proposal of full and equal citizenship for every Indigenous in the land and you will confront “progressive” expressions of outrage over the very idea. Indeed many of Canada’s Indigenous 50 years ago responded to Trudeau’s suggestion with anger and resentment. They liked their special status. They could retain their Cultural Identity by living in isolation on reservations while being subsidized by those who had put them there. Seeing themselves as Victims, they were clearly eager to profit from their Victimhood.
To a Rational Humanist, of course, this reaction was problematic, entailing a refusal to transcend the perimeters of Racial Identity and confront life not as Indigenous Beings entitled to special consideration but simply as Human Beings subject to the same standards as everyone else. Moreover while various aspects of what is often flatteringly described by “progressives” as their “spiritual” [i.e., non-technological] respect for Nature are hardly conducive to success in the real world, the dissident chiefs seemed perfectly willing to profit from the rational, scientific, profit motivated exploits of the Western Patriarchy. There would seem to have been an element of hypocrisy to the rejection by Canada’s Indigenous of Trudeau’s offer. It is the same hypocrisy that informs Ibram Kendi’s anti-racism which oxymoronically also sees History solely in terms of Race.
The Myth of the Canadian Genocide is fraught with half-truths and hysterical exaggerations, as of course is the Myth of continuing Systemic Racism in the States. Thank goodness for the myriad of Black American “conservatives” who continue to view the Individual in the moral terms of Martin Luther King rather than through the lens of some superficial, socio-economic formula; and of course those Indigenous leaders here in Canada such as Cadmus Delorme, Sophie Pierre and Ellis Ross, equally given to an Intelligent, Humanist perspective rather than one crassly rooted in Race.